Banyan

An absence of architecture

North Korea is not the only spectre haunting north-east Asian security

GOING by past form and the evidence of satellite imagery, North Korea may soon test another nuclear device, its third such experiment. The regime is not yet threatening to do so in so many words. But on May 6th it blustered that it would “persistently safeguard the sovereignty of our nation, based on self-defensive nuclear deterrent”. It is some consolation that the previous tests have been judged at best partial successes, and that North Korea's efforts to test rockets that might carry bombs across continents have fizzled. Nevertheless, that such a volatile, bellicose and unstable regime should possess even a rudimentary nuclear capacity is enough of a security threat. But even if a magician were to turn North Korea into a peace-loving democracy overnight, north-east Asia would remain a dangerous place.

Understandably, the nuclear threat has in recent years dominated discussions about regional security. Besides constituting a threat in itself, North Korea has managed to raise tensions and heighten suspicion between the other members of the “six-party talks” (America, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea), intended to lead to its denuclearisation. China convenes the talks, which began in 2003, broke down most recently after meeting in late 2008 and have achieved conspicuously little.

America and the others have suspected China of duplicity and of not doing enough to rein in its ally. China in turn has feared that others do not give proper weight to its worries about the consequences of a sudden implosion of the North Korean regime, whose survival has become bound up with its nuclear ambitions. South Korea has at times suspected Japan of wanting to thwart the emergence of a unified Korea as a potential regional competitor. And Japan has worried that America and South Korea might be too lenient towards the North.

However, as Wang Dong, a scholar at Peking University, pointed out at a recent conference organised by the Asan Institute, a think-tank in Seoul, North Korea's role as a spoiler is just one of four big obstacles to closer security co-operation in north-east Asia. The others are territorial disputes, rising nationalism across the region and, of late, America's strategic “return to Asia”.

North-east Asia is home to the two great unresolved conflicts of the cold war, which left the Korean peninsula divided and Taiwan enjoying de facto independence, despite China's continuing irredentist claim. The region is also riven by many other disputes. Japan never accepted the Soviet Union's annexation of the four islands making up its “Northern Territories” at the end of the second world war. The issue continues to sour relations with Russia. Japan and China quarrel over the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands—and the nearby hydrocarbon reserves. In 2010 a clash there involving a Chinese trawler caused a serious row. Japan and South Korea contest the rocks known as Takeshima or Dokdo. South Korea and China often clash over fishing disputes in the Yellow Sea. On April 30th nine Chinese fishermen were detained after two of them were accused of attacking four South Korean officials.

In each case, governments' ability to compromise with foreign powers is hampered by popular nationalism, sometimes fanned by the governments themselves. Acting tough is a cheap way of courting public opinion. But, perhaps because the Chinese Communist Party is so preoccupied with a change of leadership, China's protests about perceived foreign encroachments have this year been few and far between.

China's leaders are also, however, preoccupied with what they see as America's co-ordination of its allies to gang up and resist China's rise. The recent American agreement with Japan to move some American marines from Okinawa, despite the failure as yet to agree about the future of the Futenma airbase, seemed a face-saving way of putting off a difficult decision. China, however, will focus on the underlying trend, which is the gradual beefing up of Japan's own security role. That will make China more uncomfortable.

What helps make all these tensions alarming is the lack of any regional institutions or processes where they might be contained. In comparison, South-East Asia, with its ten-member regional association, ASEAN, appears well-endowed, even though ASEAN is often derided as a mere talking-shop. ASEAN-centred institutions are all that is on offer in north-east Asia, too: its regional forum, the ARF, to which North Korea was admitted in 2000; its newer East Asian Summit, excluding North Korea but bringing in eight other countries, including America, India and Russia; and meetings among those 18 countries' defence ministers. But all these cover too big an area and too many issues to achieve much beyond vague confidence-building.

There were hopes that the six-party talks might become the forum for a broader security discussion, but North Korea has scuppered that. And those who argue for “five-party talks”, excluding it, have to counter China's fear of what mischief a spurned North Korea might get up to. Eventually, security talks between the “Plus Three” group of ASEAN's regional dialogue partners, China, Japan and South Korea, might develop some substance. The group already has a secretariat in Seoul, but its focus is on trade and other economic issues.

If something cannot go on for ever, it will stop

So, in the words of the Asan Institute's Leif-Eric Easley, who also teaches at Ewha University in Seoul, resolving the crisis over North Korea's nuclear programme may be a necessary condition for building lasting security in north-east Asia. Even then it would not be sufficient. An optimist would point out that the rest of the region's security problems are at least half a century old, and have not caused disaster yet. A pessimist would retort that North Korea is only the most obvious instability in a perilous place; that a crisis is inevitable; and that the countries that will have to cope collectively suffer from a terrifying lack of trust.